Most telephony service providers offer a variety of telephony features to their customers. These telephony features help telephony users to manage the way their incoming and outgoing communications are handled. Some non-limiting examples of such telephony features include call waiting, call forwarding, “find me/follow me” (FM/FM) call forwarding, call transferring, distinctive ringing, selective call rejection, selective call acceptance, outgoing call blocking (or barring), etc.
One particular feature that is offered by many telephony service providers is a “calling line identification (CLID) displaying” feature. For subscribers to this feature, calling line identification information associated with a calling party's communication device is displayed on the called party's communication device. This allows the called party to see the calling line identification information that is associated with the communication device that is originating the call. The calling line identification information can either be a phone number associated with the calling party communication device or a name associated with a user of the calling party communication device, among other possibilities. In this manner, a called party will be able to determine who is originating the call prior to answering the call.
In existing “CLID displaying” systems, when a call is transferred via either a direct transfer or an assisted transfer, the calling line identification of the initial calling party is displayed to the second called party. However, a deficiency with such systems is that the second called party is not aware that the call that he/she is receiving is a transferred call, or that there was an intermediary. As a result, this can be confusing for the called party to whom the call has been transferred, since they will not necessarily be aware that the call was transferred.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,826,271 discloses a method for enabling the original calling party's calling party identifier information to be displayed when a called party transfers the call from the original calling party to a second called party. However, in many circumstances, the calling line identification information that is being displayed to the second called party is inaccurate or limited in the information that it conveys. For example, the calling line identification information may indicate “Anonymous” or “D. Rogers”, such that it is unclear whether it's Dianne or Dave Rogers, or even Grandpa who lives with Dianne and Dave. As such, this inaccurate or limited information is not necessarily useful for the second called party.
Thus, there remains a need in the industry to provide a technological solution that alleviates, at least in part, some of the deficiencies associated with the manner in which calling line identification information is provided when calls are transferred or routed from a first called party to a second called party.